Insider Brief
- TacnIQ.ai secured $1.5 million from In Group Holdings as part of a $3 million pre-seed round to develop tactile AI models that help robots and machines interpret touch in real time.
- The U.S.- and Singapore-based company said its technology is already used by paying customers in logistics, construction, e-commerce, hospitality and healthcare, while more than 5,000 hours of tactile interactions have been collected for model training.
- TacnIQ.ai is also developing additional sensor nodes and working with Synaptics to expand the range of physical signals its models can process and support more commercial hardware applications.
TacnIQ.ai has secured $1.5 million from lead investor In Group Holdings as part of a $3 million pre-seed round to develop AI models that help robots and machines interpret touch in real-time.
TacnIQ.ai’s technology processes signals created through physical contact, giving machines information about how they are interacting with objects and their surroundings. The company, based in the U.S. and Singapore, is developing foundation models meant to work across a variety of industries, tasks and operating conditions rather than being trained for a single application.
“Our mission is to build AI models that deliver real-world impact today and transform how engineers design and develop hardware,” TacnIQ.ai co-founder and CEO Aashish Mehta said in the announcement. Mehta added the investment will help it expand its engineering team, develop more advanced tactile AI models and move the technology toward more commercial applications.
TacnIQ.ai indicated its technology is already being used by paying customers in logistics, construction, e-commerce, hospitality and healthcare. Those deployments use sensor-based data collection nodes to gather information from physical interactions while supporting workplace safety and ergonomics. They also provide training data for TacnIQ.ai’s models with the company pointing out it has collected more than 5,000 hours of tactile interactions through controlled experiments and commercial deployments.
TacnIQ.ai is developing additional sensor nodes to capture a wider range of physical signals to expand the types of data available for training its models. The company said its approach is designed to reduce the amount of application-specific training needed when deploying tactile AI across different tasks.
TacnIQ.ai is also working with Synaptics on technology intended to move tactile AI from research into commercial hardware applications. Synaptics develops touch and display technology, while TacnIQ.ai is focused on the software and data used to interpret physical signals.
